SDET Lead
SDET/QA leadership role at BigChange (part of Simpro Group) in Montreal: owns the enterprise QA strategy across web, mobile, and API, building automated quality gates in CI/CD while managing and governing large outsourced third-party QA vendor teams. Core tooling includes Cypress/Playwright/Selenium, Postman, Jenkins/GitHub Actions, and Jira.
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Montreal, Canada
- Work setup
- Onsite
- Seniority
- Lead
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 3+ years
- Category
- Qa
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 7+ years in Software Quality Assurance
- 3+ years in a senior lead, manager, or QA director capacity
- Proven track record managing vendor teams, third-party contracts, and offshore/nearshore testing units (20+ engineers)
- Hands-on experience with test automation frameworks (Cypress, Playwright, or Selenium)
- API testing experience (Postman, REST APIs)
- Deep knowledge of release management and continuous delivery pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or Azure DevOps)
- Professional fluency in both French and English (spoken and written)
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
- Vendor governance & SLA management: KPIs, SLAs, SOW oversight, vendor performance reviews, cost/budget management
- Architecting end-to-end testing strategies (manual, automated, performance, security) and establishing CI/CD quality gates
- Managing offshore/nearshore talent across multiple time zones
- Tracking quality metrics: defect leakage, test coverage, MTTD, MTTR
Full description
Contexte du poste
About the Role
We are seeking an experienced Senior QA Leader to take ownership of our overall Quality Assurance strategy, testing frameworks, and global QA delivery. In this role, you will lead and scale our software quality operations primarily by managing and steering our outsourced third-party QA vendor teams.
You will bridge the gap between internal product management, engineering teams, and external QA partners—ensuring that our software releases meet the highest standards of reliability, performance, and security.Ce que vous ferez
Key Responsibilities
QA Strategy & Process Governance
Define, execute, and evolve the enterprise QA vision across web, mobile, and API platforms.
Establish automated quality gates within our CI/CD pipelines to ensure continuous integration and deployment security.
Drive test planning, execution strategy, risk analysis, and test data management strategies.
Lead root-cause analysis (RCA) sessions for high-severity production defects and institute preventative measures.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Partner closely with Product Managers, Software Engineering Leads to integrate testing early in the AiDLC
Serve as the primary escalation point for quality-related issues across all release streams.
Report quality health dashboards and operational status directly to senior technology leadership.
Core Competencies & Skills
Vendor Governance & SLA Management: Defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Statement of Work (SOW) oversight, vendor performance reviews, and cost/budget management.
QA Strategy & Test Governance: Architecting end-to-end testing strategies (manual, automated, performance, security), establishing quality gates in CI/CD pipelines, and driving a "shift-left" testing culture.
Distributed Team Leadership: Managing offshore/nearshore talent across multiple time zones, fostering quality ownership across vendor boundaries, and mitigating communication bottlenecks.
Metrics & Quality Analytics: Tracking defect leakage, test coverage, sprint velocity, defect mean-time-to-detect (MTTD), and mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR).
Bilingual Communication (Quebec Requirement): Professional proficiency in both French and English is standard for Montreal-based leadership positions to align with local business operations and Quebec language laws (Bill 96).
Tool Stack (in bold what we used):
Test & Defect Management: Jira, Xray, Zephyr, TestRail
Test Automation Frameworks: Cypress, Playwright, Selenium, Appium, Postman, RestAssured